In the Spotlight: Shadows in the Fog by Greg Messel

The story begins on a stormy morning in February of 1959. The front page
of the morning paper is dominated by news of the plane crash which killed rock
’n roll stars Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Richie Valens.

Private Eye Sam Slater is hired to perform what he thinks is a routine
two-day job as a favor for a friend. However, it all goes terribly wrong when a
young San Francisco policeman is
gunned down while sitting in a parked car with Sam.

The murder sets off a chain of events which will pull Sam and his wife
and partner, Amelia, into a dangerous web of intrigue in the dark, shadowy
alleys and back rooms of San Francisco’s Chinatown.

In the winter of 1959, Amelia resigns as a TWA stewardess and is now
Sam’s full time partner in the private eye business.

Sam and Amelia inadvertently come in conflict with the San Francisco mob boss after
helping a crusading newspaper reporter who is working to expose corruption in Chinatown. Now a
mysterious dark car follows the Slaters every where they go. Sam and Amelia
discover a hidden world of corrupt cops, gambling parlors, brothels and human
trafficking exists right under their noses.

At the same time, a rising California politician hires
Sam and Amelia to find his daughter who disappeared without a trace three years
earlier. The search is prompted by the sudden appearance of a letter from the
woman, who was presumed dead.

As Sam and Amelia pursue these cases, they discover that all the clues
lead them back to Chinatown. The Slaters
want to avoid taking on the San Francisco crime lords
head-on. However, when Amelia is kidnapped in an alley during the Chinese New
Year’s celebration, Sam plunges himself into danger desperately searching Chinatown to find her
before it’s too late.

The reader will be drawn into fast moving events which culminate in a
harrowing conclusion as Sam Slater races against the clock on a foggy night in Chinatown.

“Shadows In The Fog” is the fifth book in the the award winning Sam
Slater Mysteries Series but is a stand-alone thriller in the tradition of great
whodunits.

Book Excerpt:

The heavy blanket of clouds that had hung on the city all day was
especially thick in the OceanBeach area near
Playland. It felt like rain.

When Amelia arrived at her car, which she had parked in a side lot by
the Funhouse, she opened the door before removing her trench coat and tossing
it on the front seat. She had been overdressed in Cassandra’s parlor, leaving
on her coat over her gray wool dress.

As she stood by her car, a slow moving large blue car caught her eye.
She froze. There were two lines of parked cars in the lot. Amelia noticed
that the driver of the car seemed to be watching her as he slowly drove through
the parking lot.

She watched the man suspiciously and wondered if he might be looking for
a parking spot. Maybe the man in the blue car was waiting for her to vacate her
spot. Amelia continue to watch him and thought if he tried something she could
always turn and run into the Funhouse.

The large blue car then stopped as it entered the row where Amelia was
parked.

Amelia leaned in to place her purse on the seat and thought of taking
the handgun out of her purse. It was then that the blue car suddenly
accelerated and then slammed on it’s brakes with a screech right behind
Amelia’s car.

Amelia had been concentrating on the slow-moving car and never saw the
second man rapidly approaching her from behind. The assailant put a black
hood over Amelia’s head and grabbed her arm, painfully twisting it behind her
before pushing her into the back seat of the blue car. The swiftness of the
attack was so unexpected that Amelia had no chance to cry out before she felt
herself being held down on the back seat by the large powerful man.

She heard the car door slam. “Let’s get outta here!” the man said to his
partner and the car began to drive away.